Please excuse my idiocracy but I have hit the wall and cannot figure out a few things when using the XE-1.

Last night we celebrated my sn's 5th birthday, where I felt a bit let down as I was not able to get any pictures worth keeping. We had many people over so th eliving room was a bit congested and it was not the best environment to take pics as well, but I had to snap a few just for memory.

I look over them, and I feel that maybe I've gone wrong, or my techniique is not right, hence I need some insight on how to operate the XE-1 with the 35mm.

Indoors, incandesant lighting, candles, and lots of people about so getting correct framing, or thinking of composition was impossible. I set the camera to:

The results are not acceptable at all, so it's a bit shameful to even show them.

The whole of today I keep thinking if I made a mistake to sell my x100 to but the xe-1. I know there is learning curve, so I'm asking membes of this forum for some insight.

To further test my inability to get it right, I tested the camera when I was on the bus today, taking some snaps here and there and they were a bit better, At least I could work some magic with the RAW files.

So my question is, if you're at an indoor event, where lighting is different (not low), what are the advisable settings to use. And what would be the better settings for highlights and shadows. I normally set the highlights to +1 and shadows to -1.

I don't know if this is the reason, but shadow noise is a bit annoying.

Can someone shed some light please.

Below are the pics I took on the bus today - 359 was taken with DR set to AUto and it selected 200% - auto iso 800